Former IKEA building in Coventry to become major art store and museum 5 Mar 2021

Coventry City Council has announced that it will go ahead with the purchase of the former IKEA building in the city, to transform the seven-storey structure into a major site to store and display works from national art collections. This will include 8,000 works from the Arts Council Collection and 8,500 works from The British Council Collection. Some local collections from the transport museum, and collections currently held at Whitefriars Monastery will also be transferred to the site – freeing the monastery to be opened as a tourist attraction for the public. Once it has purchased the leasehold, Coventry Council will invest £1.3m in the site, as part of the long-term reimagining and regeneration of the city. Coventry’s year as City of Culture begins in May this year – although work will not begin at the IKEA site until May 2022 for an opening in August 2023, it will be part of a long-term legacy for the city. Councillor David Welsh, cabinet member for culture and the arts, said “a national Collections Centre would bring together the foremost national arts and cultural partners and their respective national collections alongside the city’s collections, to create a consolidated national base that would be at the heart of Coventry city centre.”  BBC, ITV, ALVA, Coventry Observer, Art Newspaper